Transcript for test 31 Section 1

Section 2
Good morning everybody and welcome to Royal Hospital College. What a beautiful September day you've brought with you! My name is Richard Thomas. I'm the head of the chemistry department and today it's my pleasure to introduce our wonderful college to you. Normally the dean professor John Thomas, yes, we share the same surname, likes to do this. But unfortunately he has a bad case of flu so he's doing the sensible thing and staying in bed. He sends his apologies but you'll be meeting him soon. So no big problem. I'm sure you are all so excited at the thought of studying here that you have read all about the history of our school. But for those who haven't, I'll give you a brief summary as we walk around.

The college was originally founded in. Anybody know? Yes, 1694 by William and Mary of Orange. Can you remember your high school history? Right. William of Orange was a Dutch prince married to king James II's eldest daughter Mary. 1694, poor queen Mary died of smallpox the same year. Actually the school was not a school in those days it was a hospital for retired sailors of the royal navy and it wasn't here in the beautiful countryside of east England. It was located in what is now east London on the banks of the river Thames. Back in those days it was also in the countryside but London grew and grew and by the end of the 19th century it was surrounded by houses and smoky factories. So after the second world war at New Zealand millionaire named Sir Gifford Reed kindly gave the school 65 million pounds to move to here he was an architect and he designed much of the beautiful school that you see today. It opened in 1933 and if you look to your right there is a statue of Sir Gifford Reed facing that other large statue of Queen Victoria.

Okay let's jump back to the 1700s. In the 1780s the royal hospital was changed into a school for the orphans of officers and men of the royal navy and they added the word college to the
name. For nearly a hundred years it was co-educational. But in 1868 the board of governors decided to make it boys only. Much more boring don't you think? And it stayed that way right up until 1991 when the school became co-educational again. Okay and here we are at the school
church. Do we have any musicians with us? You, wonderful. What do you play? Piano and Organ. Oh! You'll love it here. Our church has the largest organ in England and we often have recording companies, the BBC etc coming here to record. And our staff and students are more than welcome to play it. In fact there's a waiting list. It's very popular.

In fact the school is very well known for its choir and orchestra. I sing in the choir and last summer we toured North America. Great fun. A healthy mind in a healthy body as the Romans used to say, which brings us to our gym and swimming pool. Both are open from six in the morning till eleven at night seven days a week. The gym has everything you need for aerobics, weight training, martial arts, basketball, gymnastics and even an indoor running track. So there's no excuse for not keeping fit and of course we have all the usual team sports. Soccer, basketball. Our women's basketball team won the all England universities championship this year. Rugby, water polo, no American football. So you see we are quite a sporty lot here and we also study sometimes. Here's the main library. I'm afraid we can't go in because it's being redecorated. It's supposed to open again this wednesday but it looks to me that it'll be a bit late and here's the coffee shop. Why don't we stop here for a drink? Agree, jolly good.